Fast-Track Fatalities
In Maryland, lawmakers yield to drivers' need to speed.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008; A14

THE ARGUMENTS against allowing police to install cameras to catch speeders would be comical if they weren't so damaging -- to traffic safety, to families and to communities devastated by traffic deaths and injuries, and to law enforcement itself. Yet, somehow, those arguments -- advanced mainly but not exclusively by Republicans -- managed to kill a bill authorizing speed cameras throughout Maryland this year, despite the active backing of the governor and the support of both houses of the state legislature.

In 2006, the last year for which figures are available from the Maryland State Highway Administration, nearly a third of the state's 651 traffic fatalities were caused by speeding. The share of the carnage attributable to speeding that year was the highest recorded this decade. Generally speaking, speeding is second only to impaired driving as the leading cause of traffic deaths, and the two frequently overlap. Cut down on speeding and impaired driving, and you can be sure that traffic fatalities will also drop.

If a machine existed that could spot a drunk driver as he weaved along the road, it's hard to imagine that even libertarian-leaning lawmakers in Annapolis would oppose its use, at least near schools and in residential neighborhoods and construction zones. But, somehow, Republicans in the General Assembly -- champions of civil liberties that they are -- believe Maryland would be overstepping by allowing the installation of cameras to nab speeders statewide. (Alone among the state's 24 jurisdictions, Montgomery County has been cleared to use the cameras for the past year.)

There is no right to privacy when it comes to speeding in densely populated subdivisions or through construction zones where workers are doing their jobs or past elementary schools. Speeding is against the law; it is not a God-given civil liberty. Nor does a speeding driver somehow deserve a face-to-face encounter with a police officer, as Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Baltimore County Republican, speciously suggested. The fact that you can't game a speed camera is the whole point. And besides, police officers who don't have to staff speed traps can be usefully deployed dealing with other serious crime.

Since Montgomery County started using speed cameras last year, the proportion of drivers going 10 percent over posted limits in locations where the cameras and warning signs were mounted has dropped by 70 percent, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Sure, speed cameras can be a nuisance; no one is overjoyed to get those tickets in the mail. But if they slow drivers in accident-prone zones, they're well worth the $40 tickets.